Tools, Dials & unexpected Levers

Chronicle

I found a great Facebook page, I had to ask them how to sign up, and then they asked me three questions before accepting. The first one was simple :

“Who are you?”.

I thought about it for a few seconds then I answered : “An haecceitist”

– which mean nothing, I agree, but I explained.

What is asked here? My job? My age? Who am I, really? Along the day, I’m

a dad

a mammal

a solitary man

a watcher

a photographer

a musician

an heterosexual

an ex

an internaut

a walker

a reader

a blogger

a hungry man

a reader

a quiet guy

a sleeper

a lover

a bookseller

a cook

…and many other things, right? Plugging to possibilities. See “Haecceity”

When one answers to the question “Who are you”, one lies. We are legion.

OOOOO

When I hear someone who has a job and makes plenty other things than what the job should be, I’m in alert mode. I don’t know why. There’s something wrong. The accident is near.

OOOOO

Dominique A is a French singer who has a trait I love : his chant sometimes gets out the harmony, which creates a tension before it “comes back” in proper harmony. Chords live their life, they do what they should do. The voice dances with and into it, but a single word can, at times, places itself out of what it should be. It’s like a smart and slightly irritating way of modulating…

I’m obsessed by that.

My musical brain suffers a bit because it’s wrong, and at the same time wishes and craves to fix it – thus I often hum the “correct” note over the singer. I like this movement.

It’s true. Some musics you listened too much become flat, no taste. Some months later, you take a CD (or you just find the folder on your Macintosh), and the weaving is magic again. This just happened to me with Röyksopp’s

How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen than the perception of the Infinite.

Following the article I wrote yesterday about creativity, I think that the most effective tip, the simplest one, is to walk. It just works : as soon as you’re outside walking because you have to buy a French baguette and two croissants for the breakfast with your lover, you have ideas. Ideas for life, obviously (solutions), but also ideas to write about if you’re a person of words.

I’m slightly disturbed in this process sometimes because I am a little photographer, therefore here am I with my eye, seeing lights and frames, watching trees, doors and gutters.

The creativity book told that walking for ideas works also inside, it’s the movement that works, even around a desk. I was not so sure then I remembered things, like this film editor who always worked standing up in front of his machines. He said that to create (and a film editor creates scenes) you have to “feel”, to be ground-linked, a state you do not have when you’re sitting on a chair.

I heard about many writers or artists (Flaubert for sure, Stravinsky maybe) who wrote/composed standing up in front of a lectern…

And maybe bloggers, I suppose, know this : when your article is done, you post it then you stand up to sip orange juice or to shower or to check your postbox, and bim you’re flooded by new paragraphs, extensions, corrections and new words or pitched four words sentences : you have to run back on your chair with this rush…

OooO

An intern told me about some funny little UK series like “Black Books” and “The IT Crowd”. So I gave it a try (in English with English sub). I’m not used to this humor which is : casual, dares everything, childish and very smart at the same time – messy haired, hilarious, stupid, inventive, poetic and clownesque tout à la fois.

Apart from Friends, what are you’re best funny (unknown) TV series?

OooO

With Christmas coming I miss time but I’ll begin next week : to find 4 or 5 “Best Albums of 2018” lists on the web, study them, YouTube them and try to find nuggets and marvels…

OooO

I’m working a lot on GuruShots, a perpetual multi-challenges full of photographers. It’s really interesting to try to please this crowd while staying myself (and not bending my work towards the community hidden standards (which are ugly to me)). In a way there’s a part of manipulation, excitement (a single picture can get hundreds of likes within minutes), challenge (you have to build some pictures, like this tortoise one) and thinking (you have to prepare, schedule and decide about the little tools they provide you), all this to climb in the hierarchy.

When I write and article about a great photographer, I am flabbergasted : these masters would never win anything in GuruShots : too inventive, too dark, too strange, too empty. They are out of the box…

OooO

“One doest not fit” within his parents or the milieu they grow in (think : “Matilda”), it’s really annoying but also gives a rush to witness… I wonder how many writers came from that, writing to flee…

OooO

So it’s the old story of directors who give everything in their life then become to make bad films (Hitchcock, De Palma, Argento), but it’s not true for everyone (Lean, Kurosawa, Spielberg). Del Toro, I dislike everything, thus I watched The Shape of Water skeptically, and I’ve been amazed by everything : a perfect casting, great music and decors, dialogs, scenario. The traps were many (like to push too far the Jeunet/Amelie mood), and it’s been perfectly done.

Like this:

Cats are dramatic. When I walk in my corridor and I meet Isis the cat, she stops and acts “as if” she was about to be slaughtered by the human, then runs away with big eyed panic, as if I was a dangerous goblin…

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I read about a strange Akira Kurosawa‘s tool, the Japanese director, who said, when shooting a movie, something like :

“When a scene is done, in the box, and you’re happy : go on shooting”.

Opens a little door in my head, written “Why?” on it : When you have what you need, maybe you are relaxed, then you can try new things? Or maybe the tiredness could bring another “tone”? Kubrick is said to shoot dozens of times, just to make the actors quit their easiness, their habits…

Where else could this be true? Prayers? Poetry? Training?

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Alexithymia is a word built on Greek, of course : “No words for emotions”.

It’s not really a mental disorder. It’s a difficulty identifying and describing feelings or emotions.

It’s interesting because it leads to different branches :

I don’t know what I feel, I don’t have words for that.

I don’t like what I feel, thus I’m afraid to find out.

I don’t know what to think about what I feel, though I physically feel something, it doesn’t give me an emotion or I don’t know what would be the “proper” emotion.

There’s a confusion between “the event” (outside of me) and “the sensation” (inside).

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I read about a study about the factors that employees consider motivating. Good wages, , interesting work, security of the job, of course, but the number one factor was “to be valued”. Really valued.

It’s not about a bonus or a “best employee of the month” challenge. It’s really something like :

“I see what you do and I appreciate what you do”.

People often do the best they can with what they got. And they wait, they need to be seen…

Makes sense, right?

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Lax ways of escaping (life, a situation, boredom) should be listed :

Alcohol, sports, speedy leisures, drugs, video games…

But what if you can’t escape? Will your body find a way (accident, illness…)? Dodging forging ahead?

Like this:

When synthesizers came, many musicians were amazed because “it can mimic any other instruments!”. But of course some guys began to use them for their own possibilities. Isn’t there a tool here?

When something new comes, use it as a tool to go elsewhere and explore, instead of planting it in the old soil – though it could work too, right?

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Fraternity between those who don’t play the game.

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Oblivion makes you disappear. Fame imprisons in a genre.

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Some loss of balance can lead someone to go through their ideas.

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Some police investigators are just logical and thorough. Some others have diagnostical impressionism : they have a “clinical sense” which is continuously plugged to the world and human beings…

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Rain is happy to meet grassGrass is happy to meet rain

Claude Roy

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What helps us in friendship is not much the help that friends give us, but the trust we have in this help.

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What is the height of distress, or hardship? To not be surprised by anything.

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Maskenfreiheit, the freedom of the mask

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The Five Obstructions, Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, 2003

In this underrated film the iconoclastic Danish director Lars von Trier challenges experimental film-maker Jørgen Leth to remake one of his earlier films, The Perfect Human, five times, each time with a different creative constraint. The first “obstruction” imposed by von Trier, for example, was that the film had to be made in Cuba, using shots of no more than 12 frames. Another was that it had to be made as a cartoon. It’s basically these two creative egos going up against each other and it gives a fascinating insight into the film-making process, what goes on in a director’s head and how you cope with stress and constraint and challenge. It’s delicious and playful and there’s never a dull moment watching these two maestros needling each other.

Like this:

We’re at the beginning of a heatwave in France today. Sort of. Well, all my windows opened… as France fights Argentina for the football World Cup. I don’t need to watch it, because I can hear all the city screaming each time France scores a goal. 4-2 we won!

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How to tell about something which happened only one time, yet comes within the scope of a series?

Bookstopoo should be the title of a book I’ll write one day : a LIST of good books you should have in your toilets (why in the world do you call this “restroom”??).

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Obedient to rules, no one can invent.

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You remember the past. The good things or the bad things?

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It’s called Hapitoubimi. What kind of animal is this?

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I learned about this idiom, “dodge a bullet“, it’s great!

Urban Dictionary says “If someone has dodged a bullet, they have successfully avoided a very serious problem.”, that makes sense, thought I wonder, as an ESL, what is the color of it : is it by cowardice or because you’re smart? Is it effectiveness and skillfulness, or is it, when you dodge a bullet, because you’re a lazy coward? When do you use it?

Well, I ask this because I understood also that “dodge” is something which is simply “not right”, and I found many sarcastic things about Dodge City. I also remember in Deliverance (the movie) the talking about “an old Dodge” – sounded “old wreck”.

Like this:

“Then he struck a match to light his cigarette, but the wind blew it out”

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I have a map of the USA on my bathroom wall. I like to wander over around when I brush my teeth. I keep being amazed by the size of the country – I discover names of roads, parks, cities. Joplin, Tulsa, Holton, Salina, Wichita, Overland Park, Oldredge! I dream to be on Road 35 with a car, a camera and 2 months free.

Also, I notice these strange grey fields : the indian reservations. When you live in Europa, it’s a bit mysterious! We only have a few images of Indians in head, mostly from movies.

So I found “Potawatomi“, thus I googled.

“Upper Mississipi River”

I really should try to know more. Maybe find a documentary, a book? I googled it. I should Instagram, maybe. Try to find a penpal…

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This morning I remembered that my country was called “La Gaule” before the Romans invaded all of it 2000 years ago. They occupied it for 500 years until defeated by the Francs. We became La France, but in the process we lost our tongue, our language, le gaulois has been replaced by le français. French language is very similar to Italian, because we made it from Latin from Roman Empire.

If Romans would not have been defeated, we would be maybe now like US’s Indian Tribes : in reservations, grey squares on a few % of the map France, talking Gaulois and organizing Casinos and other trails.

Dang, we lost our language, though. Don’t be surprised if French is a mess to learn now!

Heeyyy maybe a tribe will attack America after 500 years of occupation, like here, and the USAns will go back to the old continent, the Indian natives will get back their country, but they will keep English to talk (with Mexicans). OK, that’s a strange mess, and a good novel to write. Please serve yourself 🙂

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“…to have had a mature man to break it down”

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I have a theory that if you live a long time under pressure (with religious or big-political parents for example), you accumulate a huge amount of… something. A steam that will eventually explode one day into bursts of nonsense and madness.

Tamed for some time by iron reason and logic, one’s brain looks like a white hot furnace/cooker, up in an ivory tower. Then beware…

Violence.

Inappropriate acts.

Madness.

Loss of common sense.

The young years, clamped in a vise, created monsters. A poopy bustling…

Ain’t it splendid that in UK, vice means two things? A clamp tool and a wrong mind.

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Picture this : puffing and crimson nurses running after a fool…

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Bernstein‘s book : “Findings”.

Preface : talking about words and music, “I find the same joys of ambiguity, structural surprises, anagrammatic play and grace of phrasing in both”.

Well, I smiled. This could be a program for my blog! Ambiguity in three other books I just bought : Sud (photos, but no legends : you don’t know where it’s taken). In Tissot (classical painting, but the rich ladies are lost and bored). In Jones (who was a man, and a woman).